![]() ![]() The encroachment of homes into undeveloped areas creates a much larger and challenging front for firefighters to defend. Wiener says he is not suggesting that development be banned outright anywhere, but that the state should impose standards that “reflect our needs as a state and reflect risks.”īetween 19, an estimated 45 percent of all new housing units built in California were constructed in what experts refer to as the wildland-urban interface-where the state’s cul-de-sac’d suburban subdivisions and rural communities meet its flammable forests and shrub fields. “Historically, we have allowed local communities almost complete autonomy in making housing-related decisions, whether that decision is not to allow new housing, whether that decision is to ban apartment buildings, or whether that decision is to allow a lot of housing in very fire-prone areas.” Scott Wiener of San Francisco, who has championed giving the state more power to override local planning decisions to meet statewide housing goals. ![]() “Job one is to help the people whose lives have been so dramatically altered by this disaster, but we also need to look at the long-term picture of this new normal,” said state Sen. Screenshot via the Spatial Analysis For Conservation and Sustainability at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The area around Paradise, with wildland-urban interface in orange and yellow. The agency is now in the process of updating its hazard maps, with an expected draft publication date of next summer. Coffey Park, the suburban subdivision of Santa Rosa that burned in last year’s firestorms, was designated a low fire risk area by Cal Fire. With wildfires growing ever more ferocious-a product of a changing climate, forests increasingly packed with dead and dry kindling, and the encroachment of development into state’s wilderness-it can be hard to tell which parts of California should be considered safe anymore. ![]() But what we’re paying this week is a very small fraction of what is needed over the years and decades.” “The zoning and the planning has to take into account the threat of fires, the building of appropriate shelters, so that people can always find a way to escape, and then of course, all the things we’re doing to mitigate climate change. Jerry Brown said at a press conference with U.S. “We’ve got to take intelligent precautions in how we design our cities,” Gov. Which presents lawmakers with a dilemma: impose costly and politically unpalatable regulations on homeowners and rip up existing infrastructure-or simply accept the risk. “It is not a great feeling…to have highlighted an area for its vulnerability, and then having this come to fruition,” said Dave Sapsis, a Cal Fire researcher who helped designate the state agency’s “Fire Hazard Severity Zones.”Īs California grapples with an increasing possibility that the once-in-a-century wildfires that have torched Paradise and Malibu are becoming once-a-year occurrences, larger swaths of the state’s population may find themselves living in the crimson regions of those maps. In color-coded fire hazard maps maintained by Cal Fire, Paradise is a bright red island in a churning sea of pink, orange, and yellow, all denoting various levels of danger. State lawmakers have been aware of the risk too. A sudden wind shift allowed firefighters to cordon off the flames, but the experience left residents intimately aware of the risks of living in Paradise. Thousands scrambled to evacuate, clogging the single road to safety. That June, a fire broke out in one of the canyons southwest of the Butte County town and quickly roared east, up and over the ridge. As California grapples with an increasing possibility that once-in-a-century wildfires are becoming once-a-year occurrences, larger swaths of the state’s population will find themselves living in the crimson high-risk regions of state maps now being revised. ![]()
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